The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Hurricane Research Division has been producing real time analyses of tropical cyclone surface wind observations on an experimental basis since 1993. HRD's analyses are created by compiling all available observations relative to the storm center about which the analysis is made. These analyses are designed to improve understanding of the extent and strength of the tropical cyclone winds, and to improve the assessment of their intensity.

The HRD Real-time Hurricane Wind Analysis System (H*WIND) is a distributed system that ingests realtime tropical cyclone observations measured by land-, sea-, space-, and air-borne platforms into an object relational database, adjusts them to a common framework, and then graphically displays the data relative to the storm with interactive tools so scientists can quality control, objectively analyze, and visualize the information.